Loving Animals: Toward a New Animal Advocacy

(Paperback)

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Loving Animalsargues that in order to achieve such goals as ending animal testing and factory farming, activists need to be better attuned to the profound emotional, even spiritual, attachment that many people have with the animals in their lives. Presenting an alternative to both the acceptance of animal exploitation and radical animal liberation, Kathy Rudy shows that a deeper understanding of this emotional bond can redefine the human-animal relationship.

Reviews

Loving Animals should be read by everyone who is concerned about the ethics of our relationship with animals. It provides a philosophical middle ground between extreme views on each side of the animal rights issue.Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation and Animals Make Us Human

We live in a messy and imperfect world, as Kathy Rudy puts it, where it's often difficult to always do the right thing for nonhuman animals or, in some cases, even know what the right decision is. People who truly love animals come to the table with different views because of our complicated, ambiguous, and frustrating relationships with other beings. Loving Animals is a wide-ranging and challenging book that deserves a broad readership. Dr. Rudy reviews different schools of thought and argues convincingly that sacredness, spirituality, and love must be central themes in animal advocacy. The work of love allows us to work together and move forward even in the harshest of times. I agree. Read this book and share it widely and I'm sure numerous animals will thank us for doing this.Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals

In Loving Animals, Kathy Rudy offers a refreshing new perspective on animal advocacy that is intellectually coherent, emotionally satisfying, and beautifully written. Some of Rudys conclusions regarding how we should treat the animals in our lives are radical, and yet they make perfect sense. This book is a treat for both head and heart, and parts of it will spin your head around.Hal Herzog, author of Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why Its So Hard To Think Straight About Animals

Author Bio

Kathy Rudy is associate professor of ethics and womens studies at Duke University. She is the author of Sex and the Church: Gender, Homosexuality, and the Transformation of Christian Ethics and Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: Moral Diversity in the Abortion Debate.